Global Shakespeare as a cultural phenomenon and a field of study has gained much of its vitality from the sheer multiplicity of genres, cultures, and artistic and academic investments in performances as multilingual affairs. Global Shakespeare festivals, performances, and courses are proliferating, because they seem to answer competing structural demands on artists and scholars to be more transnational in outlook while sustaining traditional values. Recent studies that treat “global Shakespeare” not as news-worthy curiosities but as methodology have made meaningful contributions to Shakespeare studies.

This seminar explores, among other topics, the potential of global Shakespeare as methodology. Papers may address emerging methodological issues by examining well-known instances such as the internationalism of Michael Almereyda’s film Hamlet or traveling stage works such as Grupo Galpão’s Romeu e Julieta. What does it entail to practice, teach, and study global Shakespeare in 2014? What is the value of local knowledge? How do aesthetics and international politics shape the conflicting myths of Shakespeare as a global author and national poet? What values and ideas does global Shakespeare sustain or undermine?

Annotated, English-subtitled videos of works discussed in the seminar may be available on the open-access Global Shakespeares digital performance archive: http://globalshakespeares.org/. Seminar contributors and participants in the Shakespeare 450 conference can take advantage of the digital archive’s curatorial functions to facilitate further discussion.